


A Normal Life

by IfMulderCouldSeeMeNow



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Depictions of Illness, F/M, sadfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 17:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11491623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IfMulderCouldSeeMeNow/pseuds/IfMulderCouldSeeMeNow
Summary: Written for the prompts: (a) you came back, (b) it wasn't supposed to happen like that, (c) you know, it's okay to cry, and (d) Do you ever think we should just stop this?“Do you ever think we should just stop this, Mulder” she asks softly, and his eyes focus in the darkness, finally noticing her on the couch. Her voice is morose and voice of its usual timbre.





	A Normal Life

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the anon who sent this prompt! One day, I'll be able to write happy Mulder and Scully.

It’s nearly 4am when he returns from his recent jaunt into the darkness, shuffling into the old house, the doors and floorboards creaking like his aged bones. Going back to the X-files, chasing cases late into the night had begun to take a toll on him, both of them really. Scully had taken today off, looking exhausted as ever. He couldn’t blame her.  Mulder drops his keys into the teal shell-shaped holder from their getaway over 8 years ago and begins to slip out of his shoes when her voice startles him.

“Do you ever think we should just stop this, Mulder” she asks softly, and his eyes focus in the darkness, finally noticing her on the couch. Her voice is morose and voice of its usual timbre.

“Scully?” He flicks on the lights and visibly winces at the shock. There was a metaphor here somewhere about his penchant for darkness, but his brain was too tired and foggy to put it together into a self-depreciating joke. Mulder crosses the small distance between the entryway and the couch, processing her question as he sits down next to her, suppressing a groan as his muscles tense. It’s been a long week, following leads that ultimately headed nowhere. His brows scrunch as he finally gets a look at her face, but before he’s able to form a response, she’s already talking again.

“ _Stop everything,”_ she sighs deeply, “I’m just so tired, Mulder.”

The breath leaves her chest like it has been held there for centuries and he sees her shoulders slump, as if a great pressure has been released. He reaches out and takes her thin hand in his, thumb rubbing the space between her wrist and thumb soothingly in small circles.

“Scully, what’s going on?” his question is so kind, so earnest, that she cannot stand it. She pulls from him and raises both of her hands to her face- they are shaking. She furiously begins to wipe the evidence of tears from her cheeks and from her eyes where new tears threaten to spill over. In the light, Mulder can see the old, discolored tracks down her cheeks where tears had previously fallen and he scolds himself for not being there when she needed him. How long had she been sitting in the dark? Was it _even_ _dark_ when she first sat on the couch and started waiting for him?

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this” her voice breaks, and he scoots closer to her, resting his large hand on her knee and searching for her eyes.

“Scully, whatever it is,” he pauses, finally finding her cloudy eyes and staring intensely into them, “we can work through it together,” Mulder reassures, squeezing her knee lightly in encouragement. Scully closes her eyes and looks away in response, choking back a sob. If he’s being completely honest, she’s frightening him. He hasn’t seen her so evasive, distant or unbalanced before. Even when her mother died, and she pressed herself against him and _begged_ to work-this was _different._ Mulder licks his lower lip nervously, before he tries to get her to talk again. He knows the control Scully exerts over her emotions and whole being. It isn’t healthy, the way she constricts and restrains herself to the point of breaking, and he wants to help her.

Mulder wants to wrap her in his arms and brush her hair with his fingertips until she can let out all of the anguish inside-whisper sweet nothings into her ear and remind her that it’s okay to cry and it isn’t a sign of weakness. If he thought it could help, he would run into the night to fight whomever or whatever has made her so hopeless. But he is unable to offer her any comfort. Scully sniffles and he notices a tiny, red sliver beginning to trickle from her nose and down her lip. Before he can say anything, Scully feel the cold blood herself.

He feels like he has been transported back in time to a darkened alley 20 years ago- to a hospital room and countless cases. “Scully, you-your-” Mulder stutters.

He watches as Scully swiftly clips a tissue from the table and swipes the blood on her lip before holding it under her nose. It is a mechanical, efficient motion and Scully muses darkly that perhaps cancer is like riding a bike. After all, it is hard to forget how to die once you have already done it once. Each tissue is its own memento mori, a manifestation of her life-blood leaving drip by drip. In the silence, Scully’s mind wanders and she remembers a terrible date form her 20s. She imagines blood spurting out of her almost comically, like in those Freddy Krueger films, but then sobers: This, watching the collection of tissues grow like the tumor on her brain, was truly a nightmare- more horrifying to her than any razor-gloved dream-stalker, and something she would never wake from.

Mulder is not sure if he has been sitting silently for seconds, minutes, or hours, but it is enough time that Scully has stopped the nosebleed, clenching the red-tinted material in her fist. “It’s back,” she replies before he can even form the question with his lips, knowing it’s been circling in his mind in an endless loop. Her confirmation feels like a punch to his stomach, and he struggles to breathe, unable to speak.

His eyes dart back and forth, searching- always searching, before he collects himself and rasps a response. “We can’t let them-”

“I’m done fighting, Mulder,” Scully exhales, exasperated. The determination in her eyes, and the finality of her words, terrify him. Behind her tenacity, he sees apathy and resignation- it stirs something inside him he had not expected. Since he saw the first drop of blood, Mulder began to go through an assortment of the stages of grief in rapid succession- denial, bargaining, depression. Now, he has settled on anger, and it is boiling inside him. Mulder’s body tenses and his fists clench.

“So-” he begins, standing up from the couch in a fury. His voice laced with venom, and hot with scorching anger ready to erupt from his chest like bubbling magma “so you’re just letting _them_ win, just giving up?” There is a sick, unspoken word at the end of his sentence, reflected in his sneer: _again?_ She flinches, but it is gone in a moment. He expects her to jump up and yell at him, fire in her eyes. He wants her to scream, be _livid, enraged, incensed_ that they have fought so much for _this._ Mulder wants Scully to rise to her feet and debate facts and theories with him until they’re both breathing through their noses, coated in momentary indignation. Instead, she rises to her feet slowly. Mulder nearly crumbles when he realizes that in her labored motion she truly looks drained, like she cannot go on any longer.

“Not giving up,” Scully breaths “just giving in.” She reaches for him, but he is already quickly moving to the door. He needs time to think-for once, he has found the truth and decided instead to run away from it. He swipes the keys from the dish and swings open the front door. When he turns to meet her eyes again, they are glassy and for the first time tonight, he registers unrepressed terror. Scully’s arms are wrapped tightly around her small body, and he hears her strained whisper “I’m sorry, Mulder.”

He closes the door behind him and hears her gasp, a loud sob escaping her chest. Mulder shuts his eyes tightly, tears streaming silently down his cheeks and he realizes that he had forgotten that this is all happening to her. Scully, his partner, was dying and _apologizing_ to him for it. He feels sick to his stomach. While he felt as though his life was ending, in reality, it was truly hers. How could he have been so selfish, to demand she fight when only a few years before, he’d resigned himself to death-even ordered his own tombstone. Mulder cannot wait a second longer on the porch, pushing the front door open. She is still in the same spot she was minutes before, seemingly rooted there, tears running down her face. When she looks at him, there is shock and relief in her voice, tears spilling over her eyes.

“You came back,” she says breathily.

“I was wrong to try to leave in the first place,” he admits sadly, crossing the distance between them and finally taking her into his arms, her head nestled into his chest.

“I’m scared, Mulder,” she cries.

His arms tighten and he begins to thread his fingers through her hair, a calming gesture decades old. “I know, Scully.”

Scully gasps out her next words, a confession she has to force from her throat “I-I don’t want to” she can’t say the word die, and stumbles over her words “alone.”

Mulder’s tears slide down his cheeks unchecked, “You won’t be alone, Scully” he whispers into her hair, “We’re partners. I’ll be with you until the end.” He feels her small hands grasp at his back, the fabric of his shirt bunching in her fists.

He continues to hold her until she stills in his arms. In the quiet he slips into a memory, its irony not lost on him. Her voice, decades old but still crisp in his mind echoes: _“don’t you ever just want to stop? Get out of the damn car and live something approaching a normal life?”_

He did want that, Mulder knew-realized long ago. He just always thought they had more time. Mulder holds Scully close to him, and as the sun begins to rise, they mourn another future they would never have.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked this! Have a prompt or want to chat? Find me on tumblr: ShadequeenScully :)


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